The other day I was at a family gathering and my 2 year old daughter was playing with my iphone.  Everyone thought it was wonderful how the young just embrace new technology, with my father commenting, “Look - she’s better at it than us.” My response, for someone who lives and breathes technology, was naturally along the lines of “Not us, maybe you” with a smile on my face.  But it got me thinking.

When VCR’s came along, I was the one who embraced it and then got the task of setting it up for timer recording. This new fangled technology was not something my parents wanted to immediately embrace, especially when they had someone to do it for them.  But what will be the point that I pass along the technology crown to my children?  What will become my Achilles heel of technology? I’m hoping it’ll be some time yet before this happens, but with the pace of innovation at the moment, especially around consumer electronics and services all being built on ever increasing bandwidth capabilities, how long can we all keep up?

Maybe with the anchor of the cloud being used to deliver the capabilities, from the apps my daughter was using to the business and consumer services we all strive for, we can remain somewhat grounded.

In saying that, what do consumers know about clouds? Is the app on a cloud – you and I may agree that it makes sense - but is it? Does the consumer know? Does the consumer care?  No.  “Does it work?”  is the only question the consumer cares about.

So maybe, keeping the inside track for what’s going on in the background, I can stave off the recognition of my ‘VCR’ moment.